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Spending $315 million to buy the Huffington Post was a big deal for AOL, but, in terms of ongoing investment, Patch is a much bigger one. The hyperlocal news network is burning through $40 million a quarter -- more than Huffpo spent in all of last year.

So it's pretty important that the needle be pointing in the right direction, and, at least on the traffic side, it is. According to ComScore, Patch's 800 sites attracted a collective audience of 6.9 million unique visitors in April. Now, that's not terribly impressive on a per-site basis, and it pales in comparison to Huffpo's audience of almost 30 million. But it's a big jump from where Patch started the year: It had just over 3 million uniques in December 2010 and just a hair under 4 million in January.

A Patch spokeswoman declined to comment, but it appears that some of the growth at Patch is organic and some is a result of the Huffpo integration: The biggest jump by far, of more than 2 million uniques, came in March, the month AOL and Huffpo fused. But the overall upward trend predates the merger and a more recent "course correction" that involved adding Huffpo-style bloggers to every site.

Of course, as Business Insider notes, Patch could triple its April traffic and still not make money unless it finds a way to charge super-premium CPMs or discovers other revenue streams. Still, to be able to say that at least one side of the equation is working is something.